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New Year fireworks on Champs Elysées, man shot dead in Marseille

New Year fireworks at the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs Elysees Avenue in ParisReuters/Philippe Wojazer

Hundreds of thousands of people from around the world celebrated the New Year on Paris's Champs Elysées avenue amid tight security. Elsewhere in France a man was gunned down 10 minutes before midnight in the southern city of Marseille and a man was killed by a falling tree in the French Basque Country.

Despite rain, wind and the ever-present fear of a terror attack, the traditional fireworks and sound-and-light show went ahead in central Paris as a huge crowd welcomed in 2018.

"It's good that in a country like ours we can continue to party," Interior Minister Gérard Collomb said when he visited the Champs Elysées earlier in the evening. "Even if people around the world don't want any more parties, we want to continue to have this freedom to get the most out of life."

The crowd on the Champs Elysées on New Year's EveLionel BONAVENTURE / AFP

Cars set on fire

In what has become something of a tradition, a number of cars were set on fire across the country, despite the efforts of the 140,000 police on duty overnight.

But figures reported seem lower than on previous years and in one town in the Paris region, Aulnay, a group of about 20 mothers patrolled their estate to prevent vandalism.

Aulnay was the scene of rioting in 2017 after police allegedly sexually assaulted a young man with a truncheon.

In Strasbourg, near the German border, 20 people were injured, three of them seriously, after handling firecrackers.

Man shot dead in Marseille

In the southern port city of Marseille a 29-year-old man was shot dead by a Kalashnikov-wielding assailant as he left a bar and headed for his car.